Presenting news results in helpful ways

Whether you’re checking in to see the top news of the day or looking to dive deeper on an issue, we aim to connect you with the information you’re seeking, in the places and formats that are right for you. To this end, Google provides three distinct but interconnected ways to find and experience the news across our products and devices: top news stories for everyone, additional context and perspectives, and personalized news for you.

Top news, for everyone

If you want to keep up with the news, you need to know what the important stories are at any point in time. With sections such as Top Stories in Search, the News tab, Headlines & search within Google News, news on the Assistant, and Breaking News on YouTube, our systems identify the major stories news sources are covering. These results are not personalized to individuals, but do vary depending on region, language and location settings.

How it works

Google’s technology analyzes news across the web to determine the top stories that will show up for everyone with the same language settings in a given country, based primarily on what publishers are writing about. Once these stories are identified, algorithms then select which specific content to surface and link to for each story, based on factors such as the prominence and freshness of the piece of content, and authoritativeness of the source.

Illustration of a search tool finding the best news among many news sources

Deep context and diverse perspectives

A central goal of Google’s news experiences is to provide access to context and diverse perspectives for stories in the news. By featuring unpersonalized news from a broad range of sources, Google empowers people to deepen their understanding of current events and offers an alternative to exclusively personalized news feeds and individual sources that might only represent a single perspective.

Search experiences

When you search for something on Google, you have access to information and perspectives from a broad range of publishers from across the web. If you search for a topic that’s in the news, your results may include “Top stories” which features news related to your search, and a link to additional related stories on the News tab. You can also search for news stories and see context and multiple perspectives in the results on news.google.com, news on the Assistant, and within the “Top News” section of search results on YouTube. These results are not personalized.

Our algorithms surface and organize specific stories and content based on factors like relevance to your query, prominence and freshness, and authoritativeness of the source. You can always refine your search terms to find additional information.

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In-product experiences

In some news experiences, such as “Full Coverage” in Google News, we show related results from a variety of sources around a specific topic or story. These results are not personalized. In providing additional context on a story, we sometimes include links to videos, subscribed sources, fact check articles, and other types of content. Algorithms determine which content to show, and in which order, based on a variety of signals such as authoritativeness, relevance, and freshness.

News personalized for you

Several places where you’ll find news across Google show results that are personalized for you. These include Discover, the For You tab in Google News, and the News tab of the YouTube app on TVs. Our aim is to help you stay informed about the subjects that matter to you, including your interests and local community.

How it works

Google relies on two main ways to determine what news may be interesting to you. In the experiences mentioned above, you can specify the topics, locations, and sources you’re interested in, and you’ll be shown news results that relate to these selections. Additionally, depending on your activity settings, our algorithms may suggest content based on your past activity on Google products.

Algorithms rank content based on factors like relevance to your interests, the content’s prominence and freshness, and authoritativeness of the source. Google’s news algorithms do not attempt to personalize results based on the political beliefs of news sources or readers.

Illustration webpages swirling around a person

You can control what account activity is used to customize your news experiences, including adjusting what data is saved to your Google account, at myaccount.google.com. In some Google products, such as Google News and Discover, you can also follow topics of interest, follow or hide specific publishers, or tell us when you want to see similar articles more or less frequently.

Additional information about the news products that Google offers can be found here.